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i want to welcome everybody and thank you for joining us today and we appreciate you taking this extra step to be prepared to hike on the at in 2021 um i am catherine herndon powell i'm education and outreach coordinator based in roanoke virginia and i threw the appalachian trail back in 2006 and the pct in 2010. hey folks my name is chloe decamera i'm the trail education specialist based out of asheville north carolina so i cover education outreach in georgia north carolina and tennessee and i was a 2015 nobo through hiker i'll pass it over to morgan hi i'm morgan somerville i'm atc southern region director which is georgia north carolina and tennessee and i am a 1977 through hiker hey how's it going i am stephen aaron a trail facilities manager with georgia north carolina and tennessee i'm a 2014 northbound appalachian trail through hiker and as well as an eight season uh wilderness ranger awesome thanks guys if you've been following atc's communications at all this year you know that we did ask everyone to postpone their long distance hikes in 2020 and the pandemic is still ongoing so we haven't changed our guidance hiking is a form of interstate travel which makes it a public health risk so the safest thing for hikers and for the communities they pass through would be for everyone to continue to put off their long-distance hiking plans um we continue to monitor this situation in all 14 states and we hope for good news but until there's an effective widely available vaccine or treatment for cobit 19 we won't be encouraging long distance hikes or or recognizing them with 2000 miles certification recognition so you might be wondering why are we hosting this session with advice for long distance hikers well it appears that people are still going to go on long hikes in 2021 and that the folks who make that choice do want to be ready and all the ways that hikers have always prepared as well as taking extra precautions for this new paradigm so atc we find ourselves in a unique position to reach people who are considering a long hike with information that we hope will help minimize the risk of cope with 19 outbreaks along the trail or among hikers so atc hosting these sessions does not mean that it's safe or advisable to through hike in 2021 it means that we're determined to do what we can to minimize the risk we're going to start with a little bit of basic information about the appalachian trail just so everybody knows what we're talking about uh the trail is this year it changed a little bit every year 2021 it is 2193.1 miles from springer mountain to katahdin it goes through 14 states six national parks and eight national forests we estimate that there are about three to four million visitors each year and it is maintained managed and protected through the cooperative management system you might be thinking cooperative what now so that mean that's a lot of words that means there are 87 distinct land managers the land managers are the agencies whose land the trail passes through such as the national park service national forests and state parks there are 31 trail maintaining clubs the map on the right side of your screen there shows the different ranges of of each of those clubs so each club is uh responsible for a specific stretch of the trail and they do the day-to-day maintenance of keeping the trail open and safe and maintaining structures like shelters and bridges and all those things and then there's the appalachian trail conservancy and we are the national non-profit that coordinates all the partners and really important thing we want everybody to know before you even set foot on the trail if you didn't know it already is that the trail is maintained by volunteers they're over on a typical year there will be over 6 000 volunteers contributing over 200 000 hours of service per year so uh folks like me and chloe and steven and morgan that are lucky enough to help protect the trail as our career are just a tiny fraction of the effort that goes into the trail it's primarily cared for by volunteers so if you see one please tell them thanks and even better you can say how can i help all right and once again just so we're all on the same page with terminology there are so many different ways to hike the appalachian trail but folks generally talk about through hikes section hikes and day hikes so thru hike is completing the trail the whole entire thing every mile of it within 12 months or less that traditional northbound hike is starting down in at um spring mountain in georgia and going up to qatar in maine southbound is the reverse starting in maine and hiking south to georgia and a flip-flop hike is starting anywhere in the middle the most traditional being harpers ferry west virginia and heading north and then coming back to harpers ferry and heading south or there's so many different ways to flip-flop and i would recommend the recording of our session on alternative itineraries if anyone's interested in really diving deep into the pros and cons of different flip-flop itineraries a section hike is completing the entire trail over anything more than 12 months so some folks do what's known as a lash along a section hike which might mean that they complete half the trail one year and the other half the next year or something like that or do it over the course of three years other folks take decades to complete the trail and of course there's everything in between and a day hike is any height where perhaps your intention is not to complete the entire trail and you're just out for the day and not sleeping on it on the trail okay now that we've got some of the basic information out of the way we want to uh give you guys a moment to stop listening to me talk and think about uh what your desired experience is for your hike do you can jot something down if you'd like in the chat box or just for yourself or or just kind of meditate for a moment think about what it looks like sounds like a really great day on the trail really great night who's around all of that so our data on northbound through hiking attempts um starts in 1988 which is that highest red line here and you'll see something really interesting happens there around 1998 99 2000 and i'd love uh to see in the chat box what you think might have happened why there was a big spike about that time in folks attempting a northbound thru hike the green line you can see is the reported through height completions that we received at atc which we do have information on that going way way back the numbers we have from prior to the 90s are pretty interesting as well and the blue line is uh data coming out of baxter state park of south bound through hikers starting in maine and then of course over there on the right side in yellow we have folks who registered their their intentions to do a flip-flop hike uh which we have only got that data going back about five years so a few things to consider as you're thinking about which um which way you might like to through hike if you are through hiking northbound south under flip-flop uh consider the terrain so going southbound um you're gonna start out on the hardest hike of the whole the hardest climb of the whole appalachian trail that is a picture of the climb um of mount katahdin it's really not so much a hike in places as it is a scramble and it's a bit of a mountaineering adventure where you're pulling yourself up rebar rungs and over rocks and things like that it's really challenging and the weather can be pretty wild and then of course you head right into really difficult terrain in southern maine and new hampshire especially and then also crowds if you are going northbound starting in georgia this is not at all an unusual night in a shelter especially if it's raining chloe i believe took this picture at tri corner knob in the smokies and you'll notice there's uh even some people trying to sleep on the floor there this shelter is way for folks trying to sleep on the floor while other people are trying to stand and everyone's trying to hang their wet gear and let it dry obviously this is a cloved 19 nightmare these days but even before the virus came along that was not an especially pleasant experience and another thing to consider is the weather a lot of folks make the assumption that things are going to be warmer in georgia or and in the smokies because it is farther south but because of the elevation of the mountains we do have some real winter weather well into the spring you'll see march 21st there's the first day of spring beautiful deep snow drifts and that picture was actually taken at spence field so you know the trail goes up another 3000 feet in elevation from there so you can imagine what the snow looked like even higher up and then a few months later in may it's not at all unusual to still be seeing snow i know we've had three foot snow falls in may in the smokies so even if you start a bit later you are not going to be sure to avoid winter weather starting in the south so those are just some things to think about as you're thinking about your through hike itinerary and now we'll talk a little bit about leave no trace i'm actually not going to spend a lot of time on this because i if i let myself i can talk about leave no trace all day it's one of my favorite things to talk about so i'll just recommend you check out uh there's a free awareness workshop at lnt.org where you can get some of the basics of these seven principles and it's a really good thing to educate yourself about of course today's session we're really focusing on food storage and another thing everybody needs to be prepared to do is to dig a cat hole for your human waste especially nowadays with kovid this is an essential skill every year but we are really discouraging folks from using the privies whether or not they are officially closed they are full of germs so there's gonna be more people digging cat holes and disposing of their human waste in a cat hole that is six to eight inches deep uh 200 feet from which is 70 big steps from your campsite or from water or from the trail and it's really going to be important that everybody actually goes that 70 big steps away digs a real six to eight inch deep cat hole with a trowel because otherwise it could really really be messy all right another thing we'd really love for everybody to be registering your hike whether you're through hiking section hiking or even if you're just out for an overnight we're going to recommend using atcamp.org which is our voluntary registration system what that does is it's not a reservation you don't have a reserved spot at a shelter or at a campsite but you can see who else is planning to start on the same day that you are and in the same location as you are and you can see charts like this one here so this is a one from just a few days ago i believe the red line indicates the capacity that we've established working with our agency partners in the forest service and and the georgia appalachian trail club in inventorying the campsites and the shelters that are available basically with the with no one using the shelters which we're discouraging use of the shelters because of covid there's about room for about 38 people to start each day this year in amacola falls state park so if you go and and you want to register on a day like you see april 2nd or 3rd there and they're above the red line wouldn't it be great to pick a different day but it's not over the red line yet and you'll have a better chance that you can find a campsite it's not only better for the trail but you're going to have a better experience i know even in 2006 which was kind of the low point as in that chart that we saw earlier uh i had the first few nights in georgia i couldn't find a good place to camp i was sleeping on some uncomfortable slopes and one night my tent got flooded because i was in a terrible spot so you're not gonna have the experience you're looking for if you're starting with 50 other people on the same day so at camp is a easy to use relatively easy to use website you can do it it's easiest to use on a computer but you can do it on a phone as well especially if you're just putting in a simple through hike itinerary if you're through hiking you don't need to put where you're camping every night you can but you don't need to we you can just indicate the day that you plan to start um definitely recommend checking the charts first so you find a less busy day and then start your registration as we mentioned it's not a reservation you do still need to get permits for the great smoky mountains national park shenandoah and baxter and you cannot change your registration once you've made it so if your plans change you're going to want to cancel the old one and create a new one so recommend once you get that confirmation email go ahead and save it check your junk mail folder if you don't see it pop up after you register because you're going to need the order number that's in there so you can cancel your registration and look it up later there's just a few tips for using at camp all right now talking a little bit about safety in general and then we'll talk about safety related to covid we always recommend just listening to your gut if you are in a situation where you feel unsafe or uncomfortable do have a reporting an instant reporting system uh located on our website at appalachiantrail.org incidents and there's also a hotline 24-hour hotline you can call but the numbers on there obviously if it's a 911 emergency you should call 9-1-1 but the incidence form can be used to share you know hey there's somebody who has been making other hikers feel uncomfortable or if you see someone doing some really serious resource damage like graffiti on the shelter or something like that where you don't need a 911 response right away but you'd like to report it that's really helpful it's always smart to share your itinerary with someone at home and check in with them regularly and and have a reasonable expectation of how often they're going to hear from you so someone will be concerned if they don't hear from you and one way to do that is to consider carrying a satellite communication device because if you don't have cell phone service or your cell phone battery dies and your mom or spouse or somebody is expecting to hear from you they might get really alarmed with a satellite communication device you can usually send your gps point hit an i'm ok button more reliably than the cell phone firearms we just like to mention it that firearms are not especially convenient thing to carry on the appalachian trail because you do need to be aware of and in compliance with all the regulations of every different jurisdiction that you pass through in all 14 states and across those 87 different land managers that we mentioned it's also just heavy and a lot of folks who start out with a firearm do wind up sending it home as dead weight so we do recommend if you're concerned about other people or about bears that you might consider carrying bear spray as an alternative but if you do that make sure you know how to use it safely do stay on top of weather forecasts and look up for overhead hazards and things like that the weather bad weather can't come in pretty quickly okay talking about cove 19 safety does everybody know the term ppe it stands for personal protective equipment so what do you think might be your essential personal protective equipment on the appalachian trail in the time of cobit ask hand sanitizer nice we do recommend um that you have more than one face covering because you know you're gonna be getting sweaty and and muddy and wet not out there so it's always nice to have a few spares but also uh keep a spare one in your first aid kit that might just be a disposable one so that if you are in a situation where you might be giving somebody else first aid or receiving first aid both people can have a mask on we're also recommending that you think of your personal shelter as a piece of personal protective equipment that's your tent your hammock your tarp whatever you're sleeping in at night because it's going to make it easier for you to stay out of the shelters and we it's always a good idea to have your own personal shelter with you but this year i think it's a great idea to have one you really love because you may be committed to staying out of the shelter but once the weather is uh yucky you're going to be tempted to go in there to get out of it if you have a leaky tint or a tarp that you're not really sure how to pitch well so um definitely have a good personal shelter and use it rather than using the shelter consider that even if you go in and you fall asleep and there's no one else in there somebody else might come in in the middle of the night and then you're going to be breathing the same air as that person all night long and of course uh somebody mentioned the hand sanitizer uh try a trowel is we're gonna put that in that same category being able to stay out of the privies and handle your human waste appropriately and of course wash your hands and use santa sanitizer in the backcountry resupply and town visits we're not going to get real into detail about how to do that safely during cover 19 just think about how many different points of contact you're going to have from the trail to town and coming back again so that includes your transportation if you call for a shuttle however you're getting into town and back out as well as where you're staying where you're shopping where you're pick if you're going to the post office and picking up your mail all of those places where transmission of the virus could occur both for you and for the folks in town so we do definitely recommend that especially when you're in town you wear a mask the whole time and whether or not you see other people doing it we think it would be great if all hikers are maintaining a shared standard of safety everywhere they go washing hands staying six feet apart wearing masks all that cdc stuff okay and a little bit about logistics do know that the regulations vary throughout the trail about really especially related to dogs camping and campfires and food storage we're going to talk about food storage in a moment dogs are not allowed in the smoky mountains national park or in baxter state park unless they're service animals and you do need a permit for uh the smokies shenandoah and baxter uh smokies is the only one that you have to pay for and we definitely recommend getting that if you're doing northbound hike it's a great idea to go ahead and get that permit squared away before you leave chloe i'm gonna let you jump in actually because you know all the details what what's your recommendation of like the very lat latest somebody should be getting their permit yeah just for general you can get it up to 30 days in advance and if you're a through hiker meaning if you start 50 miles south of fontana and hike 50 miles north of davenport which are the two boundaries you're considered a through hiker in the smoky's eyes so you could be hiking a section from springer to damascus and you're still a through hiker in the smoky's size uh but if you're just hiking from fontana to davenport then you need to get a general backcountry permit uh the general permits are reservations so you have to be exactly where you say you're going to be four dollars per person per night and the through hiker permit is 20 and you have seven to eight days to get through the 71 mile stretch of the smokies you're still required to camp at the shelter sites you can't use dispersed camping like you can in georgia or nathan halen national forest but you can you don't have to specifically say where you're going to be each night typically through hikers tend to get them either before they start at springer or nanahala outdoor center in bryson city or fontana village i would not wait until fontana they are pretty notorious for wind storms that will knock out all of their internet even though they have a printing station so the earlier the better and it typically takes people 14 to 21 days to get from springer to fontana awesome thank you chloe chloe of course is working in our southern regional office there in asheville so she knows all the details and transportation again that's a kind of a pitfall in the era of covid to find safe ways to and from the trail so just be thinking through all of that especially if you're going to do a flip-flop that you have some extra transportation logistics to work out and can't say it enough i know i already said it but i'm going to say it again please register your hike at htcamp.org it is a great way to make good plans and also protect the trail all right and my last slide here we are not going to dive too deep into gear because wow there's a lot of great information out there on the internet and including on the atc's website about gear but just a couple of you know basic pieces of advice the big three things to spend most of your money on as well as your to kind of really make sure you've got dialed in well is your backpack your sleeping system being your sleeping bag and whatever pad you're going to sleep on and your shelter whether that's a tan to tarp or a vivi or a hammock those are the the things where you can really save the most weight if you get quality stuff and also you know they're going to make the most difference in your experience if you have a backpack that doesn't fit well or a sleeping bag that doesn't keep you warm enough it's it's not no fun so aim for about three pounds or less for each of those items if you're trying to keep your pack weight down as most of us are bring a real trowel it's very hard to dig an appropriate six to eight inch deep cat hole with a trekking pole or with the heel of your boot or a tent stake or various things that hikers might tell you on the internet are just fine you'll get to a rocky place with lots of roots and and you'll wish that you had a real travel we're going to talk about the food storage in just a moment so i'll skip over that and i'll just reiterate the covet 19 you know add that face covering and hand sanitizer to your gear we always recommend having a fully loaded pack weight that's less than 25 of your body weight and doing a shakedown hike of at least three days or two nights and normally if you go out for a three day two night backpacking trip you're going to try and go when the weather is really nice and sunny and beautiful but for this shakedown hike you might not be able to get anybody to come along with you but really recommend finding the worst possible weather so you can find out if your rain gear works and and really see what it feels like to be hiking in in the yucky weather as they say no rain no main now i'm going to pass things over to morgan welcome everybody thank you for coming and thank you for your interest in proper food storage along the at so when everybody talks about food storage the first thing that pops to mind is how to protect your food from bears and bears are certainly an important thing to be concerned about every year we have a number of shelters along the trail that get closed due to human bear incidents of one sort or another as you can see from these facts there are lots of them and look at that first orange dot there has been an 879 pound bear near the trail in pennsylvania and the record bears and uh many of the other states are almost as big over 700 pounds in new jersey and north carolina actually helps the world's record at about 885. so they get really big most of the ones along the trail are much smaller than that but nevertheless even the little bitty ones even the even the cubs but the yearlings are extremely strong and very adept at climbing trees and so on so bears are an important thing to try and and make sure that you are guarding your food from them getting it one other thing you can note is that their smell is really good they literally can smell your food if they're interested in it from miles away and if you combine that with their range there are bears in the smokies that have had tracking collars on that have roamed along the trail and and gone to several shelters in one night and in gatlinburg as well so they really get around and you can't count on not seeing a bear i would say that most certainly many but most of our food storage failures along the trail are due to mice uh chipmunks and and or flying squirrels and so they shouldn't be overlooked and then additionally mice in particular as a nice tasty little morsel attract snakes so if you're concerned about snakes around your campsite you know making sure that you use good food storage will discourage the mice and thereby discourage the snakes and then as you can see there's the possibility of rodents spreading fecal germs into shelters and other places raccoons and skunks are plentiful so we really need to take into account all of the stuff in the environment along the trail when we're talking about the wildlife along the trail and we're talking about food storage to make sure that those animals don't become habituated to human food because people have either stored their food in a poor place or improperly or have left a lot of micro garbage or even major garbage lying around their campsites so you may wonder why it matters having your food stolen in between supply points can be a really difficult thing to cope with along the trail we don't want that to happen to you and in some cases when a food storage device like a stuff sack is used the bears may not take the food away or the other animals but they may crush it may pierce it we've had instances of raccoons making multiple holes in in food storage sacks that they they couldn't otherwise drag away but piercing everything in the sack on the left you can see a tent the tent was um set up in the vicinity of the a.t and the smokies and a bear ripped into it and ruined it the same with that sleeping pad of the big three there's one of the big three that a bear ruined and you know quite an investment to try and deal with so stolen or unusable food damaged equipment and then finally personal injury is something that we are very much concerned about there have been only a few instances of bears that have actually bitten people along the at but in one case the person had to be airlifted off the trail to a hospital and so it's it's not out of the question but it is a possibility and the reverse of that is we just do not have injuries to the wildlife either and so you may have heard the term a fed bear as a dead bear in the smokies um years ago i used to work there as a backcountry ranger and they had a three strikes and you're out rule for bears interacting with human humans if they got into a tent or other human space like a car or a house or something then they would probably be euthanized now that has been decreased and it's one strike and they're out if they get into human space and so several bears have been euthanized in vicinity of the appalachian trail as a result of interactions with at hikers at their food so we would really like to prevent that as well so this is a quiz and i guess that catherine will answer the question here in a moment yeah you got it we'll let give folks a second to answer in the chat just to guess i'm seeing two 100 so far oh gosh they're so smart i'll finish this slide up for you a morgan because i snuck this one in i think before you had a chance to see it because i found these cool maps this is the historic range of the black bear estimated by you know biologists in north america and this is um the sightings and where they were known to be between 2009 and 2012. so you guessed it everybody 100 of the trail is in bear country right and we have had bear incidents along within every state along the trail um so so this is a uh little video we'd like you to watch takes about two minutes that talks about food storage and best methods so if you could roll that that'd be great you got it let's talk about food there are so many popular ways to store food at night and we are here to answer the question which way works best hanging food in the shelter is not a good option as bears and other animals have learned the smells of our calorie-rich foods sleeping with your food in your tent has caused problems with bears crashing in to get your treats bear lockers are great but they aren't at every shelter so you'll need a backup plan bare cables can be a good method when they are available and well maintained they aren't always available so you'll still need a backup plan there are two types of row panes the traditional and the pct method the traditional method bears have learned to defeat by slashing ropes to get to the food the pct method is effective when done properly 12 feet off the ground six feet from tree trunks and six feet from the top branch the number one recommended method on the appalachian trail for overnight food storage is the bear canister it saves time there's no need to go searching for a treatment you'll sleep better bears can't bust in so they stop associating backpacks and tents as a tasty easy food source shelters don't close and bears stay alive there are several sections of trail where campsites have been closed and bears have been put down due to improper food storage and food condition bears in the area for a list of certified bear resistant products go to ig igbconline.org [Music] when we each do our part we preserve the trail and the hiker experience for future generations [Music] do [Music] all right thank you so let me just run through these again a little bit we certainly do not recommend that you store your food in your tent or your shelter or where you're sleeping you know you don't want to have a bear come up and get in immediate contact with with where you're sleeping it's just no fun really scary in other words dangerous um ropangs as that video described the traditional ones have a higher rate of failure than the pct because the bears have learned that to look for the um the line hanging down unfortunately while the pct is a much better method because there's no extra rope hanging off that the bear can grab onto and shake or anything we've had several instances of bears that actually have climbed the tree walked out on the limb that the bear was hung on and broken the limb off so that the so that the food bags were knocked to the ground in that fashion when i worked in great smoky mountains national park as a backcountry ranger the park was going through the process of trying to figure out what sort of food storage system they wanted to use and they went through at least 10 maybe 12 different varieties of food storage devices and the bears often would defeat them within a day or two it was amazing how smart the bears were and how capable they were at figuring out how to defeat the systems they did finally settle on this agency installed cable system and those and the metal pole with arms are you know sort of interchangeable in terms of being better than rope hangs but they both have their their downfalls the cable systems for instance have been very effective at preventing bears from getting the food but in places like the smokies where you're above about 3 000 feet much of the time um sometimes the the food is is gotten by flying squirrels so there's ways to defeat those systems even if a bear doesn't get it the steel boxes i think are generally considered to be the strongest most effective way to store food but the steel boxes are very difficult to get into the back country they're expensive and they are unfortunately subject to both uh vandalism and misuse and also they are often defeated by mice and mice figure out a way to get into some little tiny nook or cranny and get inside and still get the food because the the boxes are expensive and hard to move and so on they're not located everywhere and and there's not food storage available at every campsite along the trail and in some locations along the trail primarily on u.s forest service land which is about 50 of the trail you're allowed to camp anywhere you would like unless there's a no camping sign and we certainly can't provide food storage facilities for all those places additionally as uses increased along the trail and you remember that graph from earlier it's impossible for us to keep up with increasing use by providing more and more food storage so what's really important is the personal responsibility that's essential in terms of food storage and we have found that the very best food storage method for anywhere on the appalachian trail including those places where dispersed camping is allowed are bear canisters they are the best food storage method people typically complain about two different things one is that they're not comfortable to carry and the other is that they're too big to put in their backpack well i would suggest that you plan the size of your backpack based upon carrying a bear canister when i threw hiked on the aat in 1977 most people were carrying food for at least a week sometimes up to 10 days and that was for a variety of reasons but the most obvious one was that there weren't very many grocery stores along the at back then little towns along the trail like say hot springs north carolina or highway georgia had no grocery store of significance that's changed now and there are large grocery stores in many of the at communities and so most through hikers these days are carrying much less food two or three days worth maybe four days worth at a time and so these smaller bear canisters the only way a pound 1.6 or two pounds and will hold several days worth of food don't take up much room in your pack and because of their small size aren't particularly uncomfortable to carry i carry one of the bigger ones either a bv 500 or a barricade when i go and i've found that those fit even in my 3 000 cubic inch pack of choice without too much difficulty and um i don't find them uncomfortable personally and my my pack doesn't have any suspension uh and then probably the biggest reason to use bear canisters is you may not like bear canisters but neither do the bears because they can't generally speaking get into them in yosemite national park they require the use of bear canisters and actually a number of other national parks but over the last few years they've had a significant reduction in the amount of human bear negative interactions and food being stolen because of the mandated use of bear canisters so so they are a proven method at solving the problem of good food storage anywhere where you may be camping and we strongly encourage every at hiker or rather every at camper to use a bear canister so that we can minimize human bear interactions um try to prevent the habituation by wildlife to human food and most importantly to keep people safe and the bears safe morgan i might jump in i added a few more things to the presentation um because i found this this photograph that's just really sad of uh the contents from a food condition bear that was euthanized in colorado last year two years ago 2019 um and they actually found nothing in that bear's stomach that counted as natural forage foods um because it was so food conditioned and habituated for an actual appalachian trail example that i was involved in here in virginia where i first saw a report of stolen food by a bear at thomas knopf shelter on may 4th and throughout may and june we had we went ahead and posted warning signs installed bear boxes at the shelters and recommended that hikers only stay where they could use those bear boxes and electric fence enclosures around the bear boxes and around areas where they could hang their food but we still had daily reports of bears getting hiker food and and being increasingly bold about it uh rather than just stealing it in the dark of night they were showing up in camp and then this probably has to do with the blueberry season coming in and other berries in the summer time we had five weeks with no reported incidents and also perhaps hikers were doing a great job of using those installed bear boxes and electric fence enclosures but then as soon as the berry season ended um we started getting frequent reports of stolen food again because they are you know once they've learned to associate hikers with delicious things as soon as they get hungry they start they know right where to look again um and then in august 17th we had two uh reports of folks who had a bear trying to get into their tent in the middle of the night in a rainstorm while they were in the tent which you can imagine was terrifying and there was not any food in the tent so after that uh the trail was closed 17 miles of the trail was closed to camping so you can imagine if you were trying to do a long distance like how hard it would be to show up and find out that you have to get through this 17-mile section with nowhere to camp either you're gonna have to find a shuttle and and get off the trail or you're gonna have to do a really really long day that included three shelter sites that were closed and the virginia department of gaming inland fisheries did go in to euthanize that bear but they were unable to remove the bear from the population in that case and we weren't ever sure that it was only one bear to begin with so just as an example of how hard it can be to actually you know not only as a fed bear often winds up being a dead bear but it is actually pretty challenging to to remove those bears from the population sometimes so back to you morgan yeah somebody in the uh in the chat asked about what should they put in the bear canister and one of the reasons i use a big one is because i can fit everything in there i have my stove goes in my pots my pots go in there my food all my smellables after a day or so if you're on a long trip and on a shorter trip it doesn't take real you probably have plenty of room to begin with you can put anything you have in there you know you just fill it up and it's fine now then another important thing to remember about bear canisters if you use them is that in some locations bears have learned to work outside of the campsite and wait until someone has opened their bear canister and leaves it perhaps sitting next to them as they're preparing their food and when it's open the bear runs up grabs the food and doesn't have to break into the bear canister they just it's just open so make sure that whenever you're using the bear canister you open it get out what you need and then close and lock it per the directions of the manufacturer the other thing that has happened in some incidents that where bear cans have failed is that people have not locked it properly and the bears can then avenue to get into it so it should always be closed per the manufacturer's instructions the same is true of the earth sacs using them on a traditional pct hang there have been a couple of instances on the at where the bears that broke down those limbs were breaking down ones that the earth's attacks were on and the bears can just carry them off and whether they got into them or not we don't know because they disappeared they can't carry off a bear canister they may knock it down a hill and you may have to search around a while to find it but they can't carry them any other questions yeah i think we're ready to roll into our uh our q a for the rest of the hour here we'll turn it over to chloe and steven to let us know if there's anything that's been showing up in the chat that we should all weigh in on someone was just asking how do you secure a bear cancer once you store it 200 feet away and i said i like to find like a good root system or um some kind of natural barrier that i can wedge it in between without disturbing the the resource itself so i'm not trying to like hack down any limbs and create a unnatural barrier but i am trying to use what's what's available and avoid precipices no one wants to wake up in the morning and see that their bear canister rolled uh 200 feet down a um a ravine and i have had friends have that happen to them before so just for um extra caution you should always put like reflective uh duct tape around a bear canister or a bunch of stickers so it would be easy to find in case it got batted around in the middle of the night another thing to keep in mind which doesn't happen too often on the appalachian trail but if you're if you're next to a large body of water like a fast-moving river um you wouldn't want your to store your bear can overnight too close to the river in case it could get knocked in and float downstream does food in canister still need to be in scent proof bags canisters are not scent proof so animals can still come around and check it out but like morgan said earlier bears don't like bear canisters because they get frustrated with them and eventually walk away i don't think it's necessary to have scent proof bags it's just going above and beyond what do my colleagues think yeah i agree it's a delightful extra credit um if especially with a bear hang i'll start to use those but yeah chances are if you're staying in a shelter or even along the appalachian trail it's a well-known campsite that bears might have known about and maybe their parents taught them about because they've been around for so long so these are well common areas to see in the backcountry so bears are already kind of expecting people to bring food in so it's just important for you to properly protect it rather than to completely hide that scent proper food storage is to try and break that cycle and it may take us a while to do that but yes bears do teach their cubs about where to get food including from campsites and if they fail at that they will give up on it so we really need people to do a good job with food storage and i might add to that morgan um it really does take a whole community to make a difference like morgan said in some of those pictures that um the bearer that ripped up the tent and the sleeping pad that was my tent and my sleeping bag and we were doing everything to a tee that day of leave no trace no nothing scented in our tents but that bear was just so acclimated to a point of aggression and territorial behavior that it didn't matter well i say it does matter what you do but it matters more so for the people that are coming after you so think of your hike as a bigger part of this larger hiking experience of us all taking care of the resource because once that bubble leaves the site where you're staying at a new group is going to come the next day it's kind of hard to imagine but there are a lot of people out there as we saw the numbers so these sites remain filled every single night and yeah if you see trash in particular um i think it's it's not really doing anyone justice nor the wildlife if you just walk past it so even if it's not your trash take a deep breath mutter under your breath and then pack it out i'm gonna pull out this question um about what to do if you're approached by a bear when um you're eating and i think we we didn't actually talk about what to do if you're approached by a bear in general it's ideal if you do not let the bear get your food this is something that people sometimes do is say like oh the bear is not you know trying to attack me the bear just wants my food so i'll give the bear my food and i'll run away and that if that's what you have to do to be safe then in some scenarios if you're by yourself that might um that might be what you wind up doing but if at all possible we want to um give bears you know negative associations of their human encounters making a lot of noise banging pots and pans together making yourself look as big as possible some folks will like put their you know their uh rain coat up on their trekking poles to make themselves larger or something like that if you've got multiple people everybody can get together and just shout at that bear um you know if you've got some people will carry like air horns or whistles anything that that could um scare the bear away if the bear is not getting scared away and even if you know a bear should never be approaching you so you're going to not want to camp if in the spot where that's happening at if if at all possible so i would say scare the bear way if possible and then get out of there asap and then please report it we have a report form on our website on that incident page that i was mentioning where we keep track of their encounters so anytime you have a negative encounter with a bear not behaving like a wild bear should please do record it real quick i see jess asking the about uh snacks in a hip belt during the day generally um if you were around your food that's the most important part and you don't necessarily have to have it secured in a bare canister uh the difficulties that you are going to run into are forgetting that you have a lot of those snack wrappers in those hip belts uh during the night time and or if you go to the bathroom and you drop your bat you set your bag at the side of the trail and leave it um and kind of go further away from it so just kind of making sure you're always kind of around your food is the more important part yeah there's this um beautiful side trail in the smokies to mount camera and it is uh 0.6 miles of a trek to get to this beautiful observation tower right before you stand out of the park and that site that junction with the aet and that side trail is pretty notorious for people just dropping their packs and going out and then hanging out there for like 30 45 minutes but they're packed unsupervised and there's been multiple reports of bears getting into people's packs there um and that's when like the the scent of food on your pack is just gonna make a bear curious and even if you don't have like mashed potatoes all over your backpack they're still going to sniff out what's inside it even if it's crumbs and they might destroy it or just take it away your backpack and its contents are everything you have with you it's generally your safety net you should never leave it unattended and particularly in the back country but you know this if you go off you know even 50 yards away from it to go to the bathroom or something and it disappears and you're in the middle of nowhere that that could be a serious serious problem all right well i'm not seeing too many more uh questions popping up in the chat so thank you guys so much for joining us i think we'll we'll wrap it up for today and feel free to follow up with us if you have any more questions